Federal officials tour Plaquemines coastal refuge

With BP expected to kill its renegade Gulf oil well next month, Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar assured Gulf Coast residents Thursday that they can count on federal help in recovering from the oil spill to continue for "many, many years."

Patrick Semansky, The Associated PressWhite House Council on Environmental Quality chairwoman Nancy Sutley, left, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar look at water hyacinth plants from an air boat during a tour of the Delta National Wildlife Refuge on the coast of Louisiana, on Thursday.

"Sometime in the next 10 to 15 days or so, this well is going to be pronounced dead, dead, dead, dead," Salazar said. "But the effort to restore the Gulf Coast and its ecosystems still has many chapters ahead of it. In so many ways, our work has just begun."

He said federal recovery efforts will continue "not only in the months ahead but, realistically, in the many, many years ahead."

Speaking at a news conference in Venice, Salazar said details of the federal restoration plan will emerge after Navy Secretary Ray Mabus submits a report to President Barack Obama in the next week or two.

Salazar and three other top Obama administration officials took a two-hour airboat tour of coastal restoration efforts in the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, a 75-square-mile maze of natural passes and manmade canals at the Mississippi River's mouth.

"Those wetlands, those marshes are a part of every Louisianan," said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, a New Orleans native. "It's part of who we are. It's part of our music. It's the way we speak. It's in our gumbo. It's in the way we cook. It is our culture."

Other members of the federal delegation were National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco and Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The tour included stops at two marsh-restoration projects where crevasses were cut in the banks of passes, allowing river sediments to spill into areas of open water.

Willows, cattails and duck potato have already taken root at a project site on Octave Pass that began just two years ago. Refuge officials even welcomed the arrival of water hyacinths, normally despised as an invasive species.

"What's it choking out here in the open water?" refuge manager Jack Bohannan said.

"That's right," said Ken Litzenberger, project leader for a chain of eight wildlife refuges in Louisiana. "It's grabbing water and letting the sand drop out. It's making land."

The refuge has been largely spared by the oil spill. Tropical Storm Alex washed some oil in, but much of it went out with the tide less than 24 hours later, said Drew Wirwa, assistant refuge manager.

Salazar was noncommittal when asked whether he would consider lifting his moratorium on deepwater drilling before it expires Nov. 30.

"It's in process now," he said. "Michael Bromwich (who heads the agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service) will be reporting with recommendations to me probably in the next four to six weeks, and then we'll make some decisions moving forward."